CNC Shark Forum

I finally got around to trying an edge lit acrylic with our machine. Boy am I glad I did! We may be required to change our school's mascot from the Banks Braves, to something without a Native American reference next year, so folks in our small town want as much Braves gear as they can get.

We will soon be making and selling these in our school and community. There is so much excitement and demand for these, that it's a little overwhelming. We will be offering the generic Banks Braves ones, as well as offering for a small fee the option to add a name and/or sports number. I'm curious if anyone has any advice they would be willing to offer as we take on this project. Specifically, I'm looking for anything that would help add efficiency to this project (jigs, fixtures, etc.), and have the following specific questions:

- What do you do with the cord/plug? Do you attach it to the base & how?
- We're using 3/8" acrylic, and our light strips are slightly wider than the acrylic. How do you work with that? Currently, I've tried running a keyhole bit through the slot after cutting it on the CNC and it works, but is a bit of a pain.

We are using a 1/8" tapered ball nose bit at a depth of .003 - .007 (even though I've surfaced our spoil board I have to adjust the depth as it moves towards the far end of the table). We're running 100 ipm travel speed and 20,000 rpm (3 on the Bosch Colt Palm Router).

Any other advice would be awesome. I've checked out a bunch of other posts on here about the acrylics, and truly appreciate all the willingness to share.

Thank you,

Tim Eggleston
Banks High School

Hi Tim. I cut the little plug off the end of the power supply, run the cut end through a small hole in the back wall of my base, then solder the two small wires to the LED light strip. I also tie a knot in the wire before soldering it so the wire won't pull back out of the base. I use 3/8 inch acrylic also, and like mine to lean backwards a little for easier viewing. So I cut a 1/2 inch pocket for the light strip and acrylic to rest in. You can lower the acrylic right down onto the top of the lights. They don't get hot. Or, as I do, cut the bottom pocket for the lights about 1/2 inch shorter than another pocket up above it. Center both pockets, that way you have a little step on each end for the acrylic to rest on up above the lights. It's pretty simple actually, but if needed I could send you a file where I cut my stands out and you could diagnose the steps.

Tim, there are tons of posts regarding leveling and flattening your table. If you take depth readings with your bit at all four corners of your table surface, as well as other places, it'll give you an idea of how far off the table is. You can simply shim your work piece during your carve, or shim the table. Like I said, lots of how too posts. Also, I took a couple photos of an old base showing my set up. Hope it helps.

Thanks, Keith. I don't know why I never thought to just solder the power supply straight to the lights. Guess it was too obvious. That actually makes things much easier.

It is pretty simple, and for multi colored light bases a couple of us came up with a bigger base, hollowed out underneath to house the remote pieces so you can change colors, etc, and not have any more exposed than you would for the single color bases.